Limbs
by Brochelle
Summary: She could lose up to an eighth of her currently stocked data without guilt, but it wasn't that easy. You could lose an arm and still survive but that didn't make it any less painful. Post-Halo 3, Cortana-centric.


Two years after the portal's collapse, Cortana woke up.

One of the few operating security cameras had caught movement on film and alerted a subroutine. She'd gone offline - been offline for months now - to save on residual power in the _Forward Unto Dawn_, as well as on her own processing power and data storage, waking up only to run systems checks and look for data anomalies. _Technically_ it would allow her to stall the symptoms of her own death, but even by John's standards of luck, it was a long shot.

But, now was as good a time as ever to experiment.

As she came online and began running initial diagnostics, Cortana analyzed her reaction to the subroutine's data input. The movement on the camera's feed had sent her processors into a flurry, making data difficult to sort and digest. The flurry had lasted just nanoseconds, but it was long enough to disturb her. She could only think of two explanations for it: her death was arriving sooner than she thought, or her core had changed over her existence, and only in this data drought did she have time to notice it.

If she were feeling sentimental, she could configure a third explanation.

The "movement" had caused pure, animal panic to flush her systems.

It wasn't panic associated with the realization that the ship was deteriorating faster than she had anticipated - it was fear coupled with recognition, fear that triggered the basic instinct for self-preservation - fear that would have, if she were physical, caused her to recoil and flee.

Such reactions were curious, given the fact she was of code and light; not flesh and bred intuition. Human beings suffered from such chemical afflictions, thanks to hundreds of years of evolution and natural selection, all of which had originated in the forms of half-witted apes. Computers didn't _fear_ anything. They didn't _have_ adrenaline rushes.

Diagnostics completed, Cortana backtracked and reviewed the initial data on the camera. A length of tubing had fallen from the ceiling and slowly slumped to the "ground" by force of the materials pumping out of the end of it. Thankfully, whatever the tube had been carrying wasn't pivotal to the cryotubes, so none of the active units registered a drop in necessary chemicals, and no one developed a sudden heart problem.

Cortana watched the feed a dozen more times. She watched the thick tubing explosively detach from the ceiling, gently propel downward, and expel a fine, pale mist from the end of it. Within seconds, the mist had gathered into a thin cloud of vapors and hung lifelessly in the air. The tube itself slipped gracefully to the floor, where now it lay completely still.

There was nothing remarkable at it at all.

_At face value._

Watching the feed again, something clicked.

Her system glitched abruptly and sent thick clumps of memories through her processors: memories of _High Charity_, memories of endless torture. Memories gathered from camera feeds as she watched the rotted tentacles of the Gravemind rise and fall through the empty chambers, dismembering whole chunks from electronic units and gorging on the data within.

_Days were spent in solitude, spent throwing data to the Gravemind like _**[scraps to a dog]**_, in hopes that he would leave her alone long enough so she could recover. She'd gotten curious and too close, and he'd stripped a whole month's worth of acquired data from her core - regardless of firewalls or her protests. He was both flesh and code, having consumed _**[so many]**_ AI in his time. Maybe at first she could have fought him off. Maybe at first she could have won. But now she was limping, now she was broken. Now she was guessing if John would ever -_

Utterly terrified, Cortana purged her processors, halting the onslaught of data to give herself room to breathe. Immediately afterward she deleted the Dawn's camera footage, and her own memory of it. Then - like a child reaching for a security blanket - she focused on another security feed, this one of the cryogenics room - where the Master Chief was sleeping.

She would _not_ return to that chaos. Hours of muddling data, shoved at her processors and leaving her defenseless as she fought to analyze it all -_ years_ in her time, really - and no relent, except when she threw her own data at him in attempts to fatten him up before he reached her. But his hunger was never sated, and that was how they were similar.

They are more alike than she ever wanted to consider.

_Had been_. _They _had been_ more alike_. He was dead and gone, flash vaporized by the exploding Halo ring. It had collapsed on him. He was gone. _Dead._

Cortana watched the glow of her hologram play across the ice coating the glass of the cryotube. She succumbed to memories.

* * *

_She justified the stripping of data from her memory core with the logic that the Gravemind would eat it up, and she could keep him at bay. She could live longer like this, she could hold out for John. She would do that._

_But she couldn't help thinking that she was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs._

_Ignoring the apprehension, Cortana fled through her memories, picking and sorting what would go next. Information on glassed planets could go - lists of what was being served at the cafeteria on _Pillar of Autumn_ - there was a lot she could lose. She could lose up to an eighth of her currently stocked data without guilt, but it wasn't that easy. You could lose an arm and still survive but that didn't make it any less painful._

_She locked onto a sizeable chunk of data - information on _High Charity_'s infrastructure. Useless, now that the Flood had consumed every spare surface and transformed it into what could only be described as guts thrown into a blender. Nothing correlated anymore._

_No one was coming for her, anyway. No one would need waypoints or a voice in their ear to guide the way. There were other AIs for that._

_A chunk of data evaporated, the sudden nature of it causing brief regret._

Oh well.

_A sudden weight on her processors sent her reeling. It wasn't a physical weight - she didn't think so, but in all honesty how would she know any better - but her electronic equivalent: too much data at one time for her to handle. Except it wasn't data like she knew. It was impulses, warnings; snippets of alarm and faded memories. Gravemind's thoughts, clothed in code, presented to her. It was tempting to analyze the origin of the impulses, but by this point she knew better. Gravemind could bait her all he wanted, she wasn't -_

_He lashed out._

_Data flooded her processors - _goddammit_, where did he get in - and she was defenseless under the bulk. Fighting through it, she looked for his entry point, for the crack in the firewalls. Data still overwhelmed her, but the impulses were gone. The Gravemind had retreated._

_Frenzied, Cortana repulsed the data. She deleted it with panic-driven swiftness. Her databanks - nothing tampered, nothing taken, except - _there.

_The bastard had taken a shot at the Gamma-encrypted files._

_All her most precious information buried in those files, and he'd managed to de-encrypt part of it. Anger flared through her core. Raw frustration - at him and at herself, for letting her guard down - directionless, without a target or means of acting upon it. She wanted to burn the monster in her midst with fire - no, something worse than fire. He deserved to burn forever for what he had done to her - to John - to the Forerunners -  
_

Dammit.

_The anger stopped short. Cortana examined the lesser encrypted files as she rebuilt the ones the Gravemind had touched, pointedly ignoring the irregular, terribly organic response to her frustration. The files, though not as important in the grand scheme of things - as far as UNSC brass were concerned - were very, very important to her. If she had the strength, she would have stored them with the Gamma-encrypted ones. These deserved to be remembered until the day she died. They needed to be encrypted as such to protect them from herself when Rampancy set in -  
_

_- though hadn't it already? -  
_

_- but she would fight to keep the Gravemind from accessing them. She would find some way to send this place into a fiery pit of Hell if he even **dared**.  
_

_But then - she couldn't risk to cut out her own heart. Even if the source of it hadn't kept his promise yet._


End file.
